There’s lots of ways to advertise your business on Facebook; like business pages and ads – but have you thought about using “Sponsored Stories”?

According to Facebook:

Sponsored Stories are posts from your friends or Pages on Facebook that a business, organization or individual has paid to highlight so there’s a better chance you’ll see them. They are regular stories that a friend or Page you’re connected to has shared with you.

They also published this 2 minute video to explain more about Sponsored Stories.

Facebook’s Sponsored Stories were launched early in 2011 on the premise that people are more likely to be influenced by people in their network than by ads alone. The way that Facebook is set up, when someone has an interaction on Facebook, that interaction is shared on that person’s news feed (custom privacy settings can change this). For example, if I “like” a Facebook page, like or comment on a Page’s post, or check in to a “Place” on Facebook, it will show up in my friends’ news feeds. It also shows up in the “ticker” on the right hand side of all my friends’ Facebook “home” page.

With Sponsored Stories, businesses pay for those interactions to be shared multiple times; so that it shows up in the same news feeds, but more than once and at different times of the day. Not only will the variety of ad placements allow more eyeballs on the ads, but the fact that it’s attached to someone in our network is naturally more compelling to the audience than seeing the ads on the right hand side. It’s like word of mouth marketing, but in Facebook format!

The reason I think that Sponsored Stories are a good way to market your brand on Facebook is because they are all started organically by the user; then they are made more widespread by becoming paid ads. The notifications in my news feed look like any other item, but they usually have some indication that they are sponsored; like a note that says “This is a sponsored story” or “You may have seen this in your news feed before.” Like most people, we turn to our friends for opinions when we’re looking for new restaurants to eat at, cities to visit on vacation, and products to try — this is Facebook’s way of turning those “opinions” or “likes” into advertising content.

There are many ways that Sponsored Stories can be used — like testing your message with different audiences, growing your fan base, exposing your brand to a new audience, or to strengthen your brand. Have you tried Sponsored Stories on Facebook? What has worked for you? What hasn’t? Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

Flickr Image Credit by factoryjoe

We know… it happens. Facebook is confusing. You probably set it up in a a hurry. Then you started using it, you got some friends and some traction and realized your Facebook page is actually set up as a personal/profile/timeline and not as a business page, like it is supposed to be.

You don’t want to discredit the followers you have gotten and you don’t want to have to say all that time you put into it was a waste… so what is a busy marketer or business to do?

Now you can convert your personal profile into a business profile. All your ‘friends’ will carry over to it you but they will turn into ‘likes’. For more information about converting your profile, read these FAQs from Facebook.

The only other thing that will transfer along with your friends will be your Profile Pictures album.

You can (and should) backup your information so you have it and can repopulate your page after it has been transferred. Below is info from Facebook on backing up your timeline information.

To avoid losing important content, we recommend taking these steps before you convert your profile (timeline):

1. Download your profile (timeline) information. You can download a file that contains all of your sent and received messages and all of the photos and videos you’ve uploaded to Facebook.
2. Appoint a new group admin or a new Facebook Page admin to any groups or pages that you manage. The account you’re converting will lose these admin rights during the conversion process.

To actually convert your personal page to a business page you need to go here.

Facebook takes you through some very simple steps to make the change. Follow along and when you are done, your personal page will flip to a business page.

Some things I have seen and heard that may freak you out:

• Your Friends who convert to Likes will not show up instantly. I have flipped a few pages and it took a matter of minutes but I have heard of it taking longer… even days.
• You no longer have a personal page. I know that is what you just got rid of but it freaks people out. You will need to create a new personal page.
• The ‘Use Facebook as Page’ link goes missing. That is because, as stated above, you no longer have a personal page. You currently have only the business page.
• Your search bar goes away… it comes back though.

Some things I would do before converting my profile

• If you are the admin of any other pages, make someone else an admin, your profile is going to go away… so then you won’t be able to be an admin. You can set up a new profile and add your new and improved personal profile as an admin.
• Have a stiff drink, a cup of herbal tea, a stress ball or a yoga mat nearby. There is definitely a ‘push a button and hope’ feeling that freaks me out when you do this but if you backed up your information, you should have less to worry about.

I know a change like this is stressful but if your page is set up incorrectly you will want to do it. If you carry on with your personal page as your company page, you will never be able to reach more than 5,000 ‘friends’ plus there is different functionality to a business page over a personal page.

Good luck and I hope that helps! Have any of you flipped your page? Do you have anything you want to add to these notes? Any changes that really freaked you out?

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Welcoming people has been a sign of respect and politeness for a long time. Businesses can do the same and welcome users who arrive at their Facebook page. Your wall is a great place for your visitors to hang out and interact with your company, but it isn’t necessarily the first thing that you want to show your new visitors.

Having a great Facebook landing page can help to engage new users from the very first interaction. Landing pages let you display engaging content, calls-to-action, incentives, interactivity, and so on. You can also detect whether the user is already a fan of the page or not, allowing you to create custom pages for fans and non-fans. This allows you to give your non-fans exclusive offers for liking your page.

When it comes to designing your company landing page it is much like designing for any website page, but there are some important factors you should keep in mind.

• Design your page with width restrictions in mind. Facebook pages must fit within a width of 520px. There are no constraints on the height of the page but you must keep in mind that people are most interactive above the fold. You don’t want to make the user have to scroll down the page to see the most important aspects of your page.
• Use your fan page profile picture to include more than just your logo. The profile picture has to stay within the dimensions of 180px wide and can be up to 600px high! It depends on your design and logo, but use the height to display important information about your business. Your profile picture is displayed on every tab, so it should be engaging, clearly display your business name and logo, include contact information, and be sure to include your web address- since Facebook should drive traffic to your website.
• Keep the design simple and engaging. You don’t want to have a design that is too busy or your main call to action will be lost. The headline should catch the visitor’s attention and let them know they are not a fan yet, and show them reasons why they should become one. This is a great way to display exclusive offers that only fans will receive, and that by becoming a fan you will continue to get important information and offers.
• Make use of the liked parameter. Include a secondary welcome page that only fans see, this is a great way to show exclusivity of becoming a fan. A great example of this is for ecommerce businesses. By displaying on your non-fan welcome page an offer, ex.) “Like us and receive a coupon for 15% off on your next order” Your secondary welcome page can be displayed right after the visitor has liked your page- displaying the coupon code for the 15% off their next purchase. This kind of immediate gratification will show the visitor right off that liking your page has benefits.

  

  BMW’s Facebook page is a great example of this. Most features are hidden to non-fans, which encourages visitors to like the page to see more.

A great fan page will not only encourage people to like your page – it will also effectively promote your brand and connect with readers on a regular basis. This is another opportunity to advertise your business to millions of FB users, so why not take advantage of it?

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!

Photo credit: Stéfan

A few months ago, I started using the popular Facebook application NetworkedBlogs for a few blogs that I manage.

With NetworkedBlogs you can:

• Import your blog feed into the app
• Once the blog is set up, it will automatically post when you publish a blog
• The post can automatically be tweeted out or posted to your Facebook profile or page
• Users can subscribe to the blog right on NetworkedBlogs
• Users can participate with the NetworkedBlogs community on a variety of topics

Pretty handy and how many of you drooled a little bit when I said once you post a blog it automatically tweets it out AND adds it to your Facebook profile?

NetworkedBlogs is GOOD if you are trying to get back a few minutes in your day

It is a really great feeling to hit Publish on a blog post and know it is also being sent out on Twitter and Facebook. Once a blog is out, I can move on to another task. A few hours later I can go back and see if we have got any feedback on the post. Before using NetworkedBlogs, I would post the blog, copy the URL, add it to Bit.ly and manually post to Twitter and Facebook. That process only took a minute or two but it is still nice to cut it out.

NetworkedBlogs is BAD if you are a numbers/control freak like I am

What I liked about the manual way, was the control of posting it the moment I wanted AND I liked the Bit.ly stats telling me who clicked on my link or who shared my link. It was a helpful stat for me to keep an eye on and I can compare link to link to see what was more popular.

NetworkedBlogs is GOOD if you want your blog to be a seamless experience on Facebook

Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world. Most likely your customers are on it. It is where they are spending a lot of their online time. If you want to catch people in a seamless way on a network they are already participating on – this could be the application for you. People can get alerted to a new post, read it, subscribe to it and even comment on it right in the application.

NetworkedBlogs is BAD if you want the interaction ON your website

What I like about posting our blog on social media sites is getting that traffic to our website. I like seeing that they clicked on it, I like seeing the visit in Google Analytics and I like seeing where that traffic goes from its original entrance source. With NetworkedBlogs, you lose that control over your data. The blog is read on a networked blogs link and not on your own URL.

So what to do? As with most things in the internet marketing space, you need to determine what is best for you.

• If you are looking to get some precious moments back in your day and get your content ‘out there’ on Facebook and Twitter for people to read – NetworkedBlogs may be the way to go.
• If you are managing your social media effectiveness in-house and find yourself very tied to numbers, NetworkedBlogs may not be the best choice for you.

Are any of you using NetworkedBlogs? What are your thoughts on how it has helped you or how it has held you back?

Photo credit: shioshvili

We actually get this question pretty often from small and medium sized clients alike (B2B and B2C clients too), so I wanted to share with you our opinion on how many social media accounts you should have.

First off, it truly does depend. We think it is best to start with one. Make it really easy for your customers and fans to know what page they should follow/like/subscribe to. Start with one account and strive to make that account become popular. You want lively conversation, good feedback and loads of followers or subscribers.

I’m popular, now what?

Not a bad problem to have… too much action on your social media accounts! After your Twitter account or Facebook page gets some traction, then you can start outlining what people are using the page for. Some may use it for things like customers service, job opening questions, inquiries about products and support. Once your page is popular and you can identify the needs your users have then you should consider breaking the page into sections.

Things to keep in mind

If you are going to maintain several social media profiles, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• More accounts mean more time. Do you have the resources to keep multiple accounts fresh and deliver relevant content?
• Keep all of the accounts fresh and full of information, an account that doesn’t look ‘lived in’ won’t get much traction.
• Make a plan before to alert your current fans and followers of the new resources that are available to them.
• If it isn’t working, don’t be afraid to cut your losses.

So don’t start your social media marketing by spreading your content, time and accounts thin. Let them grow first and then let the users decide which direction you should take your profiles in. What we always see is people trying to do too much and then burning out, leaving a bad taste in their mouth. Start small and as it builds, think about expanding.

What do you think? Should businesses start with multiple accounts or with one?

Creating a Facebook page for your business is a pretty good idea; most of the world seems to be on it, public business pages are indexed by search engines and it is an easy way to interact with your fans, customers and people in your industry. Facebook has taken some hard hits from businesses (especially B2B businesses) that it isn’t a real arena for a business to use as a marketing tool. That said, Facebook is regularly updating the site to answer some of these calls.

This week I noticed two very small changes that help the user experience of a business Facebook page:

1. Being able to see what other businesses ‘like’ your page
2. An easier way to display notifications

Blogging about these steps seemed harder than just showing you so I made a really quick screen cap video of what I am talking about.

If you cannot see the video, please click here to view on YouTube

A few reasons I think these are important

Even though other pages ‘liking’ your page doesn’t add to your number of people that like your page, it does show you who is tuned in to your content. Business pages now can interact with other pages as their business. They can also set up a news aggregator just in and around their industry, location, interests, customers, partners and more. Knowing which pages have ‘liked’ you lets you know who is really tuned into your messages.

The notifications alert on the side lets you quickly see, even if you are logged in with your personal account, how many times people have interacted with your page much easier. This little alert on the right is quicker and easier than logging in as the page and going to the top navigation to see the alerts.

Photo tagging business pages on Facebook

I also wanted to mention that yesterday Facebook rolled out tagging photos of business pages in photos. Right now it is only for brands or people pages (the example Facebook gives is Coca Cola and Kanye West) but I think it is safe to assume we should expect that on business and places pages soon.

Well I hope some of those little Facebook tips make it a little easier for you to engage on Facebook as your business! Good luck out there!

Photo credit: Colin_K

There is a lot of talk about Facebook Newsfeed Optimization and Social Media Optimization going on. Some are saying it is as important as SEO. I can’t say I agree with that but I do think it is important to think strategically about what you are posting to Facebook as your business, when you do that and how often.

Think of Newsfeed Optimization as just that, thinking strategically about what you are posting to your newsfeed, this goes for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or whatever social media site you are using to promote your business.

Facebook actually published their algorithm for how they rank items that are posted. They take into consideration how often a user interacts with your content usually, how popular the update is (likes and comments) and how recently it was added.

So how can you use this information to optimize your Facebook posts?

1. Be smart and publish things that your fans will ‘like’ (literally), not just something self promotional.
2. Be consistent but don’t be overbearing. Think once or twice a day, not once or twice an hour.
3. If you are going to post multiple posts per day, spread them out. If you do them all at the same time, you will probably get less interaction per post and they will all go through the timeline at the same time. Your update will be old news by the afternoon.

The biggest thing is just to be smart about what you are posting and when. We talked about Newsfeed Optimization and much more at a recent webinar: Anatomy of a Business Facebook Page. The slides are included below!

Facebook changes Pages again

Hold the phone!
Alert the media!
Put tape on the windows!
Go to the store and buy milk!
Facebook changed its Pages again!

Facebook quietly rolled out some HUGE changes to their ‘Like’ or ‘Fan’ or ‘Business’ Pages, whatever you like to refer to them as. These changes are optional right now but all Pages will be changing to this format in March. Again, I am not going to spend a whole lot of time on the specific changes because you can read all about them here, here, here and here, you also can get a tour when you switch over to the new format (if you are the Page admin).

What I do want to do is talk about how I think this is a game changer for businesses. With the new layout, you have much more functionality in the Page; you can interact with other people’s content as your Page and you have just about the same functionality as your personal Page.

So here are 5 reasons I think these changes are a game changer for companies:

1. Alerts and Notifications for your Page – This. Is. HUGE. Previously if you were adding Facebook to your marketing strategy, you had to make a conscious effort to go digging around on Facebook regularly to see if anyone interacted with your posts, pictures or links. Now, if you are logged in as your business on Facebook, all those alerts are sent to you as notifications. No more digging around. I know, for us, it was hard if someone commented or ‘liked’ something that wasn’t in our most recent content. For example, if someone commented on a photo in one of our older photo albums – we wouldn’t see it until much later and we lost that opportunity to interact with that person.You also get an alert when someone new ‘Likes’ your Page. If someone ‘Likes’ your Page, that means they have some vested interested in your business and your content. You can almost see this as a notification every time someone enters your sales funnel. You can also choose in “Your Settings” to receive any and all of these notifications in your email.
2. Feel more secure on Facebook – We work primarily in the B2B space. Many of our clients who are trying out Facebook don’t even have a personal account. You still will need to set up a personal account but users can be more comfortable that their actions on Facebook will be the voice of their company and not as themselves. If you want, you can log in as your company and never even use the personal account side. If you do have a personal Facebook account, sometimes you see something that you want to comment on or ‘like’ but you don’t want your personal Page to interact with posts and content we see as for ‘work’.Businesses are also afraid of what people will post on their Facebook Pages without their consent. Now you can take some steps to feel more comfortable. There is a function in the ‘Manage Permissions’ section where you can set a Profanity Blocklist. From Facebook: “Facebook will block the most commonly reported words and phrases marked as offensive by the broader community.” You can also moderate words on your own that you don’t want to appear on your Page.
3. Interact AS your brand to build your reputation – Now businesses can interact with content on Facebook as their business or brand. You can enter feedback to something you see as your business. This is a great way to build the reputation of your company (and not just a person in your company). Now, right on Facebook, you can interact with bloggers, thought leaders, partners etc. on behalf of your business.
4. Create a powerful dashboard of related industry news – Now, as a Page, you can ‘Like’ other Pages. Before, that was for personal accounts only. With this functionality you can create your own real-time news of content based around your business! As your business Page you should find and ‘Like’ your partners, customers, industry leaders, conferences you attend, bloggers you like etc. and you will create a powerful aggregator of your own. You will be able to see alerts about upcoming events, specials or new offers from vendors, what your customers are up to and so much more. I plan on spending a good amount of time optimizing this dashboard for the Facebook Pages that I am an admin for. The opportunity here is big.
5. Value added spots – One of the features that hasn’t gotten a ton of attention in the media reviews that stuck right out to me was the ability to select the ‘Liked’ Pages you want right on your Business Facebook Page. You choose up to 5 ‘Liked’ Pages to always be the ones rotating on your Page. That is a total value added piece for me. If you are planning an event, working with a partner or tying your business to other organizations you can add them here. For example we plan and host the Social Media Breakfast’s in Maine. Each month, we have sponsors to help with the event. This is a great sell to tell sponsors that they will be displayed on our Facebook Page for the entire month that they sponsor a breakfast! How can you use that section? There is some opportunity here.

Of course there are more but those were the 5 biggest implications I saw right off for businesses. Facebook has taken some major steps to make participating as a business more tangible for everyday users. In the past, Facebook has been seen as something for young people, early adopters or for people that had the time and energy to spend lots of time on the site. With these new changes, Facebook is easier for a business to add to their workflow, to show return on your efforts and add value to the business experience on Facebook.

As a business, what do you think of these new changes? Does this make you want to use Facebook more, less or do you still want nothing to do with it?